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Alison Kafer, “Compulsory Bodies” (79)

Consistently have to apologize to white men who are themselves assholes and in the wrong

White men are expected to do less service or teaching, and get rewarded when they jump the gun or behave inappropriately

Women must be twice as good to get the same opportunities as men, and this is particularly true of people of color

Women and people of color in positions of power buy into the system and do not do the work to protect people low on the hierarchy, pushing the burden of success and safety onto them

Faculty participate in diversity initiatives supposedly to improve diversity in the field, but then continue to behave in unjust ways

Endless push to get more underrepresented groups and women into the field, but without fixing the conditions that make them quit in the first place

Academia values productivity, measured as number of publications, at the expense of quality and depth

Faculty positions require teaching, administrative duties, student mentoring, and research for promotions and tenure, but the dearth of faculty positions and the dwindling amount of grant money means that junior faculty are pushed into overwork (60-80 hours per week) to meet the basic expectations of university administrations

Overproduction of PhDs means that getting a PhD only qualifies you for more training, requiring multiple moves and extended periods of instability

Overproduction of PhDs also means that extremely qualified academics end up going to ‘low-tier’ schools to teach, pushing research expectations up everywhere regardless of course-load or financial support

Academic work is undervalued so that both postdoctoral work and the majority of faculty positions are severely underpaid, especially as they require much more than 40 hours a week to fulfill all expectations

Postdoctoral trainees are often considered little more than indentured servants, and are treated neither as employees nor as students

Most academic positions are in geographical locations that are undesirable for most academics

Getting a job, getting tenure, and getting promotions depends as much on politics as on your quality as a researcher or teacher

“lets prevent people who are mentally ill from majoring in psychology because we wont adjust things to their needs”

“lets ruin the chances zillions of young adults trying to improve things for future generations because they have differing brain structures and chemistry”